


A voice in the darkness

by Psiidmon



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Challenge: No towers no photos no teleporting and sleep/food is required, F/F, F/M, Gen, I'll be adding relationship tags as they occur, M/M, Multi, This is a challenge run with my Linkle's characterization in mind, Trans Female Character, this is going to be hell lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 20:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10794201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psiidmon/pseuds/Psiidmon
Summary: She hears a voice in the shadows. A helpful voice.She meets a voice in the light. It's echoing nightmares.Alternative title: Fuck you, Old Man.





	1. First words

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will eventually have spoilers, but I'll add the spoilers tag to the fic when it comes up!
> 
> Also, my Linkle is trans, poly and bi and will definitely be dating more than one character, especially since she's got two right thumbs and no clue how to get cameras working.

A phrase echoed through her mind, through the darkness.  
Every place she turned, she heard the frank, decisive voice. Stating facts. Severing bonds. Clamping down on errant children.  
She detested that voice.

All she saw, while blood pooled around her, while magic worked to heal her horrible wounds, was darkness.

"Your eyes." A voice, within her head. Not her own. "Open your eyes."

The blue in the darkness grew, blooming in front of her as her eyes try to focus. A soft blue light, she slowly realised, as a sheen of liquid drains from her face. Her ears are still blocked, the liquid draining slowly.

More colours visible now - soft sandstone, dark smooth metal. Smaller lumps of blue lights. Sound slowly came back to her as the warm liquid about her body gives way to stale, cold air.

Her hands felt about, giving a new colour as she waves it over her face - pale, white. Sensation of touch filtering through to her brain, cataloguing the dark metal - is that why she knew it was smooth? And along the fringe, sandstone...

Ah, one part had a larger patch of sandstone. She carefully manoeuvres her bare body over the long patch of sandstone, dragging herself into a rough seat on the slab's edge.

Dank blue fog around the room. Her hands rubbed over her knees as she stood up, then she paused and felt at her stomach, glancing down.

A large, sensitive scar under her bare chest. Circular, running over her entire stomach. She feels a strange patch of smoothness over where SOMETHING should be - a word pops into the back of her mind. Bellybutton?

She feels dizzy for a moment as she feels herself sit back on the sandstone again. "No bellybutton." She feels herself murmur. But her voice... Something's wrong with her voice.

Something to worry about later. Her bare feet lead her to the edge of the room, following the sandstone, to where a blank door stands in her way. After a small amount of time she finds the solution to her trapped state - a small plinth.

"That is a Sheikah Slate." The other voice, the one that sounds right. "Take it." Her hand is already reaching for the visible handle on the plinth. "It will help guide you after your long slumber."

As the door opened, she looked down at the slate - it showed a soothing eyeball, familiar in a way she couldn't quite put a finger on.

A chest, and beyond that... She reaches for one and pulls it open slowly, fingers prying into gaps along the old stone. Prying it open and... pants? She glanced down past her scar and realised that the only thing she's got, at the moment, is the slate. She feels ashamed and she's not sure why, pulling the pants on and moving slowly past it and down a ramp.

The blue sconces around the edge of the room barely illuminate the same eyeball on the next closed door, her hand rubbing over it for a moment before she turns to the orange altar next to it. For some reason that same voice speaks again, telling her - ordering her, a casual kind of order, unthinking - what she had already figured out.

As she authenticates the slate and lets daylight enter the tomb for the first time, she hears the voice call her name for the first time. "Link." And she knows that's wrong. Her own voice answers the pleading one, its gruffness hurting her in her soul as she simply replies.

"Linkle."


	2. Breakfast

"You... remember?" The pleading voice responds, before the light in the distance shines far too bright. "Linkle, you are the light - you must-"

The pleading voice is cut off as Linkle's eyes adjust to the daylight - as if it can only reach her in darkness - and with no other direction she simply follows the light to see the land outside her tomb. And as she looked out at the view from the cliff, she sensed eyes on her.

She scooped up a tree branch and swung it experimentally as she slipped into a tree's shadow - and the voice reached out for her again.

"-your slate, I can't keep concentrating-" The glint of sunlight pulled the voice away from her.

"I heard you, stay safe." She said to the shadow of the tree, her free hand rubbing her throat and finding a lump there.

Her slate showed a faint series of odd lumps - regions - with a beating marker reading 'Sheikah technology located'. Linkle glanced over the information of what the temperature is - slightly chilly, her brain informs her when translating the number - before shutting the slate.

She hooks the slate to the belt provided with the old battered trousers and begins to head down the slope to where she was being watched from.

She was distracted by the squirrels and mushrooms around the small cliff, and when she found a rock placed at the edge of a natural slope - when her hands stuck to the edge of the rock. She groaned in pain as she was rolled over the top of the now-moving rock, and almost found herself toppling off a cliff.

The slate gave a soft beep of warning as she pushed herself off the ground, scrapes over her body.

She glances down the hill at the damnable rock and vowed to be careful around those things in the future, before she moves slowly and painfully to the fire where the old man she sensed watching her earlier was seated.

\---

As she picked up the mushrooms she was grilling by the fire, she glanced at the apple left tantalizingly nearby. That seemed to be enough of an indicator that baked food was good enough, and she slumped back against the small overhang's wall and ate at her campfire meal, leaving the old man's apple to him.

"Well met, stranger." That voice... she's staring blankly at him as she tries to remember. "-soul in these parts." She glares at the bearded man as the tangle of memory dangles at the back of her brain.

"The princess is never a scholar." The same voice, but from before - before the tomb.  
"The beast never will win." Why was she feeling cold suddenly, why was she feeling like she's floating, just at the sound of a voice?  
"The hero is never a woman." And then anger. Overwhelming anger, undirected, as her eyes focus on the fire, and to the old man awkwardly looking at her.

"Aren't you chilly, boy?" And she still didn't respond. "Well, do as you like." And finally she focuses back on the fire, the strange hold that came over her passing. And she glances down at herself, grunting and covering her chest with an arm.

She looks at the old man and turns on her heel, returning to her tomb - she gets the feeling she must have missed something in there, that'd stop people calling her the wrong thing, obviously only a boy would be bare-chested in this weather, right?

\--

She returned from what her slate called the 'shrine of resurrection' with an awkwardly fitting shirt, her face burning with - shame? Worry?

More sticks pulled onto the sheath on her back, she had four now as she returned to the old man, grabbing a couple apples from the tree nearby. She gave him a quirk of an eyebrow, not wanting to use the voice that feels so wrong, as she begins roasting the remainder of her scavenged food.

"So, you fancy yourself the strong silent type, huh?" A blush and she grunted out something that vaguely sounded like a question, and mostly sounded like an embarrassed cough.

The man explained about the plateau they were both isolated on, walking Linkle around the corner of the cave to view the temple across a small lake. "Long ago, it was the site of many sacred ceremonies."

Her vision darkened again, but she fought through it by clenching her hand tightly around the slate's handle, the sensation grounding her as the words washed past her ears mindlessly.

She nodded and woodenly walked past the man's lantern, slumping down at the other, unlit campfire and trying to compose herself, head resting against a nearby log and staring up at the clouds.

\--

Linkle took the woodcutter's axe with her as she left her latest rest spot, storing it in her weapons sheath and buttoning the top.

Her choices at the moment seem to be between the voice and slate's directions, and the old man's gesture to the temple. Considering she felt more comfortable with the voice from the darkness, she turned her back on the temple and moved to follow the vague radar on her slate.


	3. Cross talk

[Please watch for falling rocks.] Read the face of the slate after Linkle placed it in position. The same smooth dark metal and sandstone construct that made up the shrine jettisoned into the air, scaring off the small red humanoid Linkle had crept around, she had been feeling too shy to want to talk to them.

Once the tower rocketed into the sky, Linkle knelt down against the edge of the tower and stared down at the encampment of those same humanoids, watching them pointing and yelling at the appearance of the tower.

The head of the tower shaded her just enough to let the voice from the darkness call out to her. "You must hurry, Linkle, I can't hold on much longer." She turned to where the voice came from - a castle on the horizon, surrounded by a haze of darkness and a set of pillars. She cleared her throat and coughed, before giving a shy smile in the direction of the castle - the voice.

"I'll hurry. I promise." Her hand went back to her throat and massaged the odd lump in her throat, before she realised (having slotted the slate into the now-blue altar) that she couldn't ask the tower to lower again.

She - things felt odd. She glanced at her slate and saw an ominous red X near the base of the tower. She then turned to face the small fenced off area leading down the tower and began to climb downwards, wondering what made that X appear - and what made the plateau look like a detailed map all of a sudden.

Her hands seemed to naturally grip into the grooves of the tower as she clambered downward, resting on each of the convenient platforms that spiralled down the outside. She was noticing two things - mainly, she's really out of shape, having barely any stamina.

And she's... really, really good at climbing. She tested how long she could hold in place about a step off from her current perch, and she was able to hold her whole body up with one hand as she examined the strange new map that had appeared. Two fingers were enough to zoom in and out, and she could inspect the temple that the strange old man had mentioned from above - complete with apparent impact damage and rubble.

She glanced down and realised while she had been playing with the slate she was still holding quite steady - despite her lack of stamina. She breathed steadily as she feels her muscles begin to give out and slips her slate away a moment before she dropped back down to the perch.

She looked over at the temple as she caught her breath, shocked by how detailed the slate was. Linkle spared some time comparing what she could see to the odd map and the landscape around her, continuing to note with trepidation the detail. 

Her breath caught, she finished her clamber down to stable ground and turned to look back up at the forest - then saw the old man again, drifting down on a strip of fabric spread over a sturdy frame, his bulky frame as thick as ... hanging from a laughing ... Linkle couldn't focus on her fractured memory, and by the time her eyes focused back on reality a white beard was gently settling down onto the brightly lit ground before her.

"It would seem we have an enigma here." Linkle wanted to interject but her voice couldn't pass that odd lump in her throat. "This tower and others like it have sprouted from the ground like carrots from a long winter." That sounded wrong for an outdoorsman. "It's almost as if a long-dormant power has awoken quite suddenly. Did anything odd occur when you were atop that tower?"

Linkle wasn't sure how to start - the weird cross appearing, her promise - and instead chewed her lip awkwardly and chose to not mention the whole truth. "There was a voice, when I was watching that shadowy mist."

"Well now! A voice? Did you happen to recognise its owner?" It recognised - answered - her...

"No, she was..." Linkle didn't know if her embarrassment was from her foggy memory or from how good the acknowledgement of her name made her feel.

"Ah... that is not quite ideal, but needs must... The mist you mentioned, it comes from a vile monster." He gestured with his walking stick, lantern clattering against its holder. "It's been growing in intensity the last few days, far beyond what it was like this time last year. According to folklore, it appeared rather suddenly and violently a century ago."

The two watched the writhing cloud in the distance, spherical in shape, silently. "Do you... intend to go there?" The man asked after a gust of wind rattled his lantern again.

Linkle sighed and nodded, mind on the insurmountable task of leaving the creepy detailed region from her slate.

The brown-clad man seemed to know what she was thinking. "Would be an easier task with a paraglider like mine." A questioning glance his way and he chuckled in response. "Ah, piqued your interest? Didn't come gliding down on my own feathery wings, you know."

A sense of begrudging respect hit her in a wave of nostalgia, and she couldn't stop from a small fond smile appearing as the man in the here and now gave a hearty laugh at her apparent enjoyment of his little joke. "It's quite hardy, easily repaired, and I may be willing to trade it for a small favour."

The smile disappeared from her face, exchanged for wary interest. "All you need is to give me a small treasure. Please, come this way."

By the time he turned back around expectantly, Linkle had disappeared behind a still-standing shard of masonry.


	4. Tactile memory

Linkle leant back against the square ruin, hoping the 'treasure hunter' wouldn't follow her. Sounds of a wild party and sizzling meat came to her ears and nose and her mouth watered. Figuring she could at least get past her awkwardness if it was a merchant of some kind, she rounded the corner with a smile.

Two small humanoids turned to her and jumped in place, one pointing at her and hissing and the other rushing backwards to grab a weapon. Linkle pulled a tree branch into her hand and gripped tight, changing her stance to a wary bounce as her eyes focused on the unarmed one.

Its ears flapped as it heaved a wooden barrel up and flung it at her, the barrel rolling past as she jumped to the side. Meanwhile, the one with the wooden club was swinging it wildly about its head, catching it against the campfire they were roasting their steak on. The burning club was swung towards Linkle's head, but she dodged it as she broke her branch against the barrel-thrower's side.

She dashed around her target as the other foe shouted in pain and dropped its burning weapon at its feet, keeping it in place with a glare as she gathered her other branch from her sheath. A small rock smacked against her ear, a ringing noise and her earring indenting into her skin compounding the pain.

Her glare turned back against the barrel-thrower and soon she was smashing her second branch against it and causing it to disappear in a gust of black smoke. Her eyes glancing over the remains of... the illusion? The fact it left a small souvenir behind made her unsure of her memory and she rubbed the indentation her earring had left in her skin as proof. 

The other monster gave a dying screech as its still-burning club completed the damage it had started, its own souvenir dropping into the fire and soon being consumed. Linkle slowly calmed down from the combat stance and picked up the ... the tactile memory filled the blank in her knowledge as her thumb rubbed over the bokoblin horn.

"Reagent for... elixirs..." The same voice from the shadows, but this time coming from her memory. The sound of a finger rubbing against the Sheikah Slate with vastly more dexterity and confidence than Linkle's rough explorations on the device. "But how do they taste..?"

Her thumb rubbed over the horn again and she sighed as the memory fled from her mind. She gathered the loot from around the small camp, feeling slightly perturbed at the monster's disappearance. She heard the sound of more from a - gigantic skull?

She simply stared at it for a moment, before taking it as apparently real. Deciding to give the monsters a wide berth for now, Linkle tried to move up the small valley unseen.


	5. An incongruity

Dodging arrows and thrown rocks after a scout blared on its hollowed out horn, losing her breath jogging up the stairs, glancing at her slate... She was apparently heading for a small indentation in the border of the map near a small house. Deciding to visually confirm the 'you need a paraglider' boast from the old man, she headed in that direction.

The man was there but didn't turn to look at her as she approached the cliff. Peering over the edge, a thick fog rolling and obscuring any idea of how long a climb downward it would be... she sighed and glanced back at the old man, still striking ineffectively at his small tree.

And that gave her an idea.

Retrieving the axe from her sheath and squaring her feet, she began to work at slicing down one of the large pine trees, angling the axe so the tree would drop her preferred direction. And with an awkward grunt of "Timber?" the makeshift bridge bounced off the other side of the ravine and after rocking back and forth a few times, settled.

Settling the axe back in her weapons sheath and buttoning the top again, Linkle began to crawl across the wood, fingers digging into the splintery wood and anxieties digging into her brain, but both eventually let go of their nervous grip as she stepped onto solid ground on the other side.

She gave a nervous wave back to the old man and pointed upward to the structure made of the same muted obsidian and sandstone mixture that made up that 'shrine of resurrection'. "Treasure, I assume?"

The man nodded and finally knocked his own small tree down. "I should be able to get the cookpot heated up with the firewood from this - something to think about, hmm?"

She shrugged in response and glanced at the cliff behind her, shaking her head after looking back.

The man gives a laugh in response and begins to drag his log back towards his cabin, while the amnesiac began to make her way up the cliff, taking rests at the small outcrops en route to the promised treasure.

A clump of purple mushrooms nearby drew her attention and she reached out to pluck it and stuffed it in her pouch before pausing and thinking for a moment.

She reached into the pouch at her hip, opposite her slate, and thought of the ... rushrooms, right. And there they were, able to be grabbed in one hand and stored in the crook of her other arm. And the pouch had remained as equally empty before she thought of what she wanted.

Stuffing the rushrooms into the apparently magical pouch she shuffled her back and spun the weapon sheath around to face her front, marvelling at how, well... empty it looked. She thought it worked normally back when all she had was a handful of branches, but now...   
The last thing she put in there was her axe - and in front of her eyes, the sheath had the slightly blunted woodcutting axe nestled comfortably inside it, as if it was made for it.

She thought of something else she'd picked up almost without thinking, back when she passed the old man's cabin. And again the sheath shifted - a pot lid and torch sat mounted in a weird parody of sword and shield.

She felt a bit more comfortable knowing - well, not quite knowing, but accepting - the use of her pouch and sheath now, and continued her climb up to what her slate called Owa Daim Shrine.

A tap of the slate, a blue cast to the shrine, a descending elevator, and the shrine closed its door again to protect its contents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the end of my second writing session, took me a few weeks to write the next couple chapters. I'm hoping I can catch up to my notes and start a playthrough session again soon... I'm looking forward to playing around with the cooking segment when I get there, lol.


	6. Runework

The elevator ride was fairly swift, despite the feeling of a large distance traveled. When Linkle departed the platform through the glowing blue field, a slight tingle at the back of her neck hair was the extent of the reaction.

The same soft blue fog permeated the large space, walls made of the comfortably cool obsidian - her forehead resting against one helped calm the small headache she'd been nursing since her rapid ascent.

A gaze around showed a sandstone gear spinning an obsidian platform, beyond that more platforms, leading across the gigantic space towards another elevator shaft - beyond a ramp that a large sandstone ball was rolling down.

Linkle watched the ball drop deep into where the fog became thicker, and a soft sound reached her ear as she watched the sphere turn into blue droplets of liquid before the entire cloud became a single bead of blue light, which then streamed through a wall of obsidian before a new - or, Linkle mused, the same - ball rolled down the ramp again.

Vowing to do her best not to go through that process herself, Linkle turned her attention to the stand that, like her tomb and the one that activated that damn tower, was made to hold the slate.

Like the tower, it had a slab of obsidian inlaid with runes dangling over the stand. Unlike the tower, however, when she placed the slate down the obsidian stone lit up blue.

The slate read [Distilling rune] as a droplet of the teleportation juice beaded at the base of the obsidian chunk, the final sigil reminiscent of the Sheikah symbol when the juice - distilled rune, Linkle supposed - landed on the slate.

Linkle read a description of the function of her new rune, slotting in to one of six spaces, dubbed the Stasis rune - it seemed to be usable on a fairly large touch control. It seemed to integrate with her body on use, and overlay a yellow grid over her eyes and highlight those objects the rune could influence.

Practicing on the touch-activated screen while the rune was active taught her how to activate and deactivate the vision field, fling an orb of magic out where her hand pointed while the field was active... She had to practice on one of her two targets, and the looping/teleporting ball only was in reach just as it began to dematerialise, the fog overriding her yellow magic.

The other rule she discovered while practicing on the gear was what the embossed circle she could feel without looking meant - a timer until the magic ran out. And that deactivating the magic early would lead to the timer recharging quicker than if it ran out on its own.

Confident she'd learnt how to control the rune, she put the remainder of her time towards getting through the shrine to the elevator at the other end.


	7. The first treasured shrine

After retrieving a sledgehammer and discovering the stored momentum aspect of her new rune, Linkle slowly approached the desiccated corpse held within a blue stasis field. Before she could step on the small set of stairs surrounding the exit elevator, the grey-skinned body inside the field turned a masked face towards her.

"Hold, hero. I am Owa Daim. Do not step on the stairs."

She stood obediently, waiting with her thumbs hooked into her belt.

"Thank you. If you did step on the stairs, my ten thousand year vigil would be ended in vain." The head returned to its original resting place before it continued. "I, and my sisters, await on this place of trails to provide runes to the slate-holders."

Linkle cleared her throat. "Ah, would the runes be this treasure I'd been... tasked to find?"

The monk made a negative grunt. "I suspect your guide wishes you to take the gift I offer to the true hero. However... while some of my cohort may be willing to end their vigil for the first hero to come by, I and my sisters nearest the Tomb of Healing are of the mindset that any slate-holder could be a hero."

Linkle sighed. "Is there something you could tell me so that my guide may be satisfied?"

"While I refuse to end my vigil, I am willing to mark your slate as having completed this shrine - you can show that to your guide and say the support of Owa Daim is treasure enough for any goddess."

She nodded and glanced at the slate, the diamond symbol of the shrine filling in a full blue. "Thank you and I hope if I fail the next hero comes by swiftly." After a moment of waiting for acknowledgement from the monk, Linkle stepped into the elevator and ascended.

Back on the surface, after another comfortable elevator ride, Linkle stepped outside the shrine. She turned to regard the lights on the outside - unlike her slate, the top of the marker hadn't changed to blue, but was instead a purple. Presumably in the colour code of the monks, this meant 'come inside, one and all'?

Her musings were cut short when a flutter of stretched fabric sounded to her left, and she turned to see the treasure-hunter floating down on his paraglider. From the direction of the tree he was attacking earlier.

As a small frown at the man - why would he have circled around to approach from that direction - Linkle sat back against the flat face of the stand she activated roughly an hour before.

"Greetings, traveller!" He said as his feet lightly touched the ground. "You've completed your task, hmm?"

Linkle gave a one-shouldered shrug in his direction, before glancing up at the changed tip of the shrine and sarcastically grunting out "How'd you guess?"

"CLAIRVOYANCE, MY BOY!" The voice, at that volume, and Linkle found herself slumping hard against her perch, her vision tunnelling to a pinprick as her ears started to overheat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that it took so long to get this chapter out - it's the last one I wrote before my depression made me take over a month off. I just wrote 4 new chapters, though, so I should be posting for at least the next week!


	8. Zoning out

Linkle fell to her knees, scraping one against the temperate stone of the shrine underfoot. Her vision narrowed to pinpricks, her eyes focusing on some point beyond the small cliff face in front of her.

Her ears became her main point of reference as the oblivious hooded man continued to speak, words unheard, a peculiar ringing noise from the impact to the side of her head giving her something other than the hated tone of voice to focus on.

Everything felt dark, and when she glanced away from the man to her right, a blur of green and dark brown in her vision and the smell of pine invading her nostrils. The sight and smell, and the chill wind coming from overhead, brought a memory to the forefront of her mind.

_A spherical being - the phantom pain of many impacts to her mid-back changing that in her mind to 'man' - stands unsure on a deck made of dark pinewood. She can't quite see the rough marble outcropping on his face from here, but she knows from the look of his red and blue jacket that as he looks down nervously it's already wearing that worry-hole in its neckline._

_A second being - the cocksure attitude and flush of too many childhood teasing tells her this one is definitely also male - stands lazily balanced on a waist-high fence, spreading black ravens' wings wide in demonstration, a teasing lilt to the air between the friends underlining the willingness to swoop in to the rescue._

_And as her mind's eye panned upward into the harsh light blue of a cold day, a dash of gold feathers and red skirts is ascending in front of her eyes, red hair held under a strange apparatus that catches the rising pillar of air - laughter from the artificially-flying woman saying to Linkle's sore heart "family"._

_And the last thing she remembers, before reality came back to her, was of the rock-man leaping from the pinewood, his large hands unfolding an apparatus of his own._

The sky has gone purple as she wrenches her vision back to the land of the conscious, the old man hovering awkwardly nearby her, a hand reaching halfway between his walking stick and her shoulder.

Linkle stood slowly, her knees sore, and turned to the man. "Ah... I think I'm back, now."

He watches her carefully for a moment before clearing his throat. "Well, I apologise. I'll try not to yell, in future." He glances back towards the tower, jutting from the landscape, and then turns back to the warrior by his side. "I had intended for you to meet me back at the tower, but with how dark it's gotten..." The man sighs, and gestures to her slate. "Have you gained new insight, alongside the first of the four treasures?"

Linkle rested a hand lazily at her side, and with a flick of two fingers, the startled man stepped backwards to see his walking stick balancing in place surrounded by a yellow glow, the lantern at its head tipped forward from how he was leaning on it.

He laughs, quietly, and catches the stick the moment its runic magic fails it. "Impressive. I, myself, only know of one small trick." He reached a hand out gently to the woman before him, who reluctantly held up the slate.

The man showed her how, by pressing two small indents on either side of the slate, it could act as a rudimentary pair of binoculars. He seemed shocked when the woman pushed the rune-activation button and a glowing marker shot into the air - visible only through the slate.

"I hadn't realised you could use it in that manner." He mused, under his breath. Meanwhile, the memory-addled young woman was examining how the marker was visible on the map function of the slate, before removing it from her mind.

"Well, this is fortuitous!" The old man seemed to realise his voice was getting a bit too loud again and tried to calm down before explaining - three more shrines on this isolated plateau, and he would be willing to hand over his paraglider. "I have reason to believe you will find more of that runic magic, and forgive an old man his desire for seeing new magics performed in his twilight years."

Linkle gave a nod, returning her slate to the hook on her belt, and glanced over at the cliff in front of her. "I'll see you around, then." It wasn't a question.

The man gave a wry grin and jumped off in the direction of the pine trees, his paraglider opening up as he swept down towards his cosy house down below. The adventuress began to ascend higher, wanting a vantage point that felt more real than the manufactured reality of the ancient artefacts around her.

**Author's Note:**

> Will be attempting to update every M/W/F, Australian eastern timezone! Here's hoping a schedule will help me write consistently.


End file.
